


hold in the night

by soulgraves



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulgraves/pseuds/soulgraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was never a Batman training manual for what to do when they were set loose, left to find their own place in the world as though they’re not all still lost children in scarred shells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold in the night

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the [GET DIRTY: ficathon](http://bloodconfetti.livejournal.com) prompt: _I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time._ Post _Red Robin_.

She’s angry with him, but Tim doesn’t know if that’s because of something he’s done or just her general demeanor towards anyone bearing the family mark these days. That includes herself, of course, even if Steph’s now slipped into the mask, and maybe that’s the problem -- maybe it’s because, like all of them, she wasn’t able to walk away completely.

There’s a rooftop between them but he doesn’t need to close the distance to know she’s glaring, can see it in the line of her shoulders and the arch of her back, and for a moment he wonders if he’s equipped for a fight before reminding himself that this is Cass, not an enemy waiting in the dark.

She’s not dressed for Gotham weather, her clothes practical but thin and the mask over her eyes a last minute addition. He hasn’t kept track of her, though he knows he could ask Barbara or Dick and get a location in seconds, and perhaps that’s why he hasn’t bothered. He’s been the one disappearing in unknown cities with known agendas, and it was nice, for a moment, to think that he wasn’t being tracked every step of the way.

He doesn’t know if nature versus nurture applies to them, if their broken souls are the careless mistakes of the adults who plucked them from innocence and into darkness, or if they were always destined for the shadows. It doesn’t matter either way, but he’s a Bat so blame will always be the easiest thing in the world to dole out.

“You’re home,” he says when he meets her between chimneys, and she frowns like the words don’t quite ring true.

“I’m here,” she says, and it’s a compromise.

They’re family but that term was buried with Bruce, only Dick clinging on with desperate fingertips, trying to be a father and brother and friend and not mislay himself in the process. There was never a Batman training manual for what to do when they were set loose, left to find their own place in the world as though they’re not all still lost children in scarred shells, and Tim doesn’t know if he should tell Cass he missed her or throw up an ambivalent façade like they’re little more than strangers.

Up close he can see the smudged bruises under her eyes, the unfamiliar faded stain of red on her lips mirrored in faint marks on the back of her hand, and the dull knees of her jeans, like she’s been wearing them in and wearing them out.

“Where are you staying?” he asks, though he doesn’t expect an honest answer.

She shakes her head, looking away, and suddenly all he can see is her exhaustion -- too many untold stories folded into her skin -- and he wonders when she last slept, _if_ she’s slept, and if that’s the reason she’s here, holding back shivers on an empty rooftop in the city she’d left behind.

Home may be a dangerous word, but sometimes it’s the only place you feel safe, naïvely deceptive as that is.

“Come back with me,” he says and watches her shoulders relax, just barely. “It’s not the Manor but I have a comfortable couch and pretty great water pressure.”

She closes her eyes and when she opens them she’s more herself. Tim reaches out, pressing the side of his hand gently against hers, and remembers how alike they all are, in the end; they may be separate pieces of a picture that’s no longer quite whole, but their edges still slot in place the same way they always have.

“Okay,” she says after a while, and when she catches his fingers between her own, he can feel her finally start to warm against the night.


End file.
